Karen Gershon

Poet and writer Karen Gershon (1923-1993) was born Kaethe Loewenthal in Bielefeld, Westphalia, Germany. In 1948 she married a Gentile art teacher, Val Tripp. They had four children. In 1957, she assumed the nom de plume Karen Gershon, her father's Hebrew name, meaning "stranger in a strange land." The Tripps emigrated to Israel in 1968, returning to Britain in 1973. Phyllis Lassner is a distinguished senior lecturer at Northwestern University, teaching courses in writing, Jewish studies, and...See more

Poet and writer Karen Gershon (1923-1993) was born Kaethe Loewenthal in Bielefeld, Westphalia, Germany. In 1948 she married a Gentile art teacher, Val Tripp. They had four children. In 1957, she assumed the nom de plume Karen Gershon, her father's Hebrew name, meaning "stranger in a strange land." The Tripps emigrated to Israel in 1968, returning to Britain in 1973. Phyllis Lassner is a distinguished senior lecturer at Northwestern University, teaching courses in writing, Jewish studies, and gender studies. She is the author of two books on Elizabeth Bowen; British Women Writers of World War II; Colonial Strangers: Women Writing the End of the British Empire; and, in addition to articles on interwar and wartime women writers, Anglo-Jewish Women Writing the Holocaust. Peter Lawson is an associate lecturer at the Open University in London. He is the author of Anglo-Jewish Poetry from Isaac Rosenberg to Elaine Feinstein and the editor of a unique anthology of poems, Passionate Renewal: Jewish Poetry in Britain Since 1945 . He has written widely on Holocaust literature, including Kindertransport poetry. See less